


Faded Valentine

by greerwatson



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: F/M, Memories, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 14:26:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6288184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/pseuds/greerwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a trunk, Laurie's mother finds an old Valentine's card from her first husband.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faded Valentine

She had gone up to the attic to look through the trunks for garments that could be made over.  Old clothes had always gone to the poor:  it was the way she had been raised, in the days before the Great War.  Still, there were bound to be some things that had been kept, if only for sentimental value.

It was at the bottom of the second trunk that she found the Valentine.  The style was sweetly old-fashioned.  For a moment she didn’t recognize it.  And then suddenly, suddenly, she recalled all the details ... and had to sit down hurriedly on the floor in all the dust.

Carefully she picked the card out of the trunk and looked at it.  The bulb above was weak, its light dim; but she did not get up and go downstairs to hold the Valentine by a window.  It should never see the light of day:  it came from a past that did not belong in the vicarage, one that she did not want to share with Gareth, who would not under­stand—who saw Michael only from _this_ side of divorce and death, as the man who had betrayed her love and drunk himself into the gutter.  But oh! he had been so different when they’d met!  So handsome and charming, squiring her round London while the English soldiers went grimly off in trains to the war and returned in bandages. 

Not that he had never crossed the Channel to see the conflict.  He had, after all, covered the war for his Irish newspaper.  (She had been terrified to see him go.  Bombs and bullets were no respectors of unarmed neutrality.  He had laughed gaily, and reminded her that men have their duty.  Her brother had said much the same, though he had been thinking of God and country.)  Towards the end, Michael’s reports had caught the eye of a London editor; and it was on the strength of his prospects that he had asked her to marry him. 

She ran one finger lovingly over the yellowed paper, remembering that night.  He had bought champagne:  she had never before drunk it:  a little giddy, she had returned to the nurses’ hostel:  her parents’ wrath was yet to come.

Michael had bought the Valentine in Dublin, when he went to see his own family.  What _they_ said about his intention to marry outside their faith she did not know—but at no point in their brief marriage did the young couple cross the Irish Sea.

Michael had brought back the Valentine and said nothing about his trip; and she had defied her parents to wed him.  If the old folks’ prognostications proved, in the end, to be no more than truth, still good _had_ come of their marriage, hadn’t it?  She could not ... _could_ not ... regret marrying Michael:  he had given her Laurie. 

They had danced all night, that happy night:  the pretty English rose and her handsome Irish beau, with his cleft chin, his curly black hair, and his blue, blue eyes.  They had married, fruitfully; and she had kept the petty treasures of their love in the old trunk—kept them through the bad times, and the lonely times, and the long, empty years of Laurie’s schooldays.

She kissed her youth and laid the Valentine back where it belonged, set the trunk aright, and shut the lid.  Laurie was grown; and she had a better husband now.

**Author's Note:**

> “Faded Valentine” was written for the 2013 Valentine’s Day Challenge on the [maryrenaultfics](http://maryrenaultfics.livejournal.com) LiveJournal community to the prompt “consequences of love”.


End file.
